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Lucas123 writes: "A presentation released today by Intel revealed images of the USB 3.1 Type-C cable and connectors, which is symmetrical and will no longer require a user to correctly orient the plug. Initially, the USB 3.1 Type-C specification will support up to 10Gbps data transfer speeds. The Type-C connectors resemble those of Apple's Thunderbolt cabling in that they are much smaller than today's USB SuperSpeed connectors. The receptacle opening is 8.3mm x 2.5mm.The first iteration will have a 5 volt power transfer rate, but it is expected to deliver up to 100 watts for higher power applications in the future."

USB has a 'D-shaped' connector, standard Type B. People still manage to try and plug that one in wrong as well.

As it is, Type C should be seen mostly as a replacement to mini/micro A/B which (and also happens to replace regular ol' A), which are already a D shape.. just that they're fairly flattened.

There was a design for a type A plug that was double-sided, I don't think anybody ever produced a cable/product using it (probably because it would be relatively expensive to produce):http://www.yankodesign.com [yankodesign.com]

Personally I've never even tried to insert a USB plug the wrong way around.. it's not like it's impossible to see the shapes and remember for any future occurrences.

My, aren't you special. I've used more than one computer where they're on the back and the wrong way up (most go with the 'trident' logo on top). I have a phone and a tablet that are the same plug but the opposite way up and it's small and recessed too.

it's not like it's impossible to see the shapes and remember for any future occurrences.

Snark aside - no, no I'm not. Certainly no more special than anybody claiming they always need to try it 3 ways:)

I've used more than one computer where they're on the back and the wrong way up (most go with the 'trident' logo on top). I have a phone and a tablet that are the same plug but the opposite way up and it's small and recessed too.

In which case for the first time around, you didn't look (perhaps you couldn't, because, well, back side of the computer and all) and for the sec

Perhaps I should clarify further, though.. I look first when I'm not familiar with the device. The fact that I have to do that at all (instead of only requiring a slight touch to determine general port orientation in the first place - see sibling comment) is enough reason to applaud a 180Â symmetrical design.

But I can't say that I identify with the vocal group who appear to find a source of continual frustration in USB plug orientation vs port orientation.

Really? You look at your phone when plugging it in while dark with your night vision? You always spend the time to examine both the connector and the cable before attempting to plug it in? If so you are the ONLY one who does.

For a cable that is going to see as much insertion and removal as a USB cable you shouldn't have to look. Ever. It should be entirely doable by feel on the first go. I don't love the Apple Lighting connector but this is one thing it did right. It's easy to insert by feel. Much e

FireWire is a keyed-connector. That doesn't prevent them from being plugged in backward. As I have done on more than one occasion where the socket was "loose", allowing the keying to not work, allowing the plug to be plugged in backward.

Which promptly puts up to 45 Watts of power into the data pins.

Which tends to fry the device.

Cables that can't be plugged in wrong because there IS NO "wrong" are best - just plug it in. Don't worry about how you're plugging it in, if it seems like it will fit, it's good.

The requirement is for a D-shaped handle ie the plastic moulding. There is no need to change the spec of the connecting bit (aside the fact that the design is diabolical). Same applies to HDMI. Look at PS/2 keyboard/mouse connectors - also useless operationally, but at least you know which way is up!

You obviously never had to actually deal with serial and parallel connectors and their little screws to hold them in place.USB was a freaking godsend!Of, things can certainly get better, but companies hate jumping into new territory and would rather do it one increment at a time, if they can't avoid changing in the first place.

The "I wouldn't design it that way" crowd rarely sound experienced or responsible. USB connectors, especially the full-size ones, have remarkably few problems:

1). The contacts are difficult to damage. Much more difficult than the old D-shell connectors. The D-shell did a pretty good job but if something got inside the D-shell, the pins themselves had almost no strength;2). I always thought that a connector with no retainers was a clear negative. However I managed to overlook the power plug! Accidenta

My biggest complaint is that the A connector is the perfect width to fit into an ethernet port and short out the the network card. This can become really annoying on laptops that have the usb and ethernet ports right next to each other.

Realistically, how many amps is thing thing going to allow? 100 watts means that those wires will handle 20 amps, and handle this factoring in voltage drops, especially with the skinny cables and tiny connectors.

Realistically, I wish the USB-C connector could start at 5 volts but negotiate to 12 volts to offset voltage drop. Higher voltages would help more, but then there will be electrocution issues past 12-24 volts depending on a lot o

IAAP (I am a physicist).
There is nothing wrong with "5 volt power transfer".
It is just saying that the power (whether 100mA or 100A) is always transferred at 5 volts, and not at 0.5 V or 50V.
What is strange here is the "power transfer rate". Power= "energy transfer rate". "Power change rate" would make sense when talking about power ramp up, (i.e. how many milliseconds it needs to go from 100mA to 1A).
A Type-C cable with100W racing through it sounds like a fire hazard to me.

A Type-C cable with100W racing through it sounds like a fire hazard to me.

Since you're a physicist, you should be perfectly able to apply everything you just wrote to the notion that the potential is not necessarily 5 volts. There could be more potential than that in later iterations; TFS doesn't say.

(I, for one, have never been satisfied with the notion that USB @ 5V is all that useful as a means of powering devices.)

If you read the entire presentation you can see that they are referring to the fact that there is a low power 5V mode and a high power 20V mode. It always starts at 5V and most devices will stay there, but high power stuff can ask to switch to 20V and up to 5A, giving the maximum 100W of power.

I believe that's how it works - as 100W at 5V would be 20A, which would cause some problems with cables melting. Start at 5V, and a means for devices to negotiate higher voltages if the host is capable of supplying. Not all hosts will be able to - good luck getting 100W out of a tablet.

I disagree. Part of the immense popularity of USB for flash drives, keyboards*, mice*, speakers and some external hard drives is that they can be powered by the data cable and not require a wall-wart to power them. So the precedent for the ports to provide power already exists.

* Yes I'm being absurd with Keyboards and Mice, but demonstrating that older interfaces like RS-232 and PS/2 also supplied power to devices.

What you wish for already exists as the USB-PD extension for USB2 and 3. It provides a negotiable 12V and 20V supply with up to 5A current (depending on cable and power supply limits). With time it will become more common as peripherals using PD as their main power supply enter the market.

5v is so your keyboard doesn't need a voltage regulator, or if it does (for 3.3v) it can just use a cheap nasty linear regulator.

100mA at 20v to 3.3v inside a keyboard? A nice 1.7 watts of heat converting your keyboard to a gentle hand warmer.

The spec is allowing a handshake up to higher voltages and amperages, but always starting at 5v.Although I'll never be satisfied until my laptop charges from USB. Spec says 100 watt and my laptop only needs about 70 watt.

5v is so your keyboard doesn't need a voltage regulator [...] 100mA at 20v to 3.3v inside a keyboard? A nice 1.7 watts of heat converting your keyboard to a gentle hand warmer.

You might have noticed that USB has more than two wires... It would be absolutely trivial to add one more pin that outputs 12V.

Higher voltages, like 20V, would be trickier, because computer PSUs are standardized on providing lots of amps on the 5V and 12V rails, and only very, very little at other voltages. PSUs do 24VDC, but you ca

You are correct. I got my wires crossed. I actually have a 7805 replacement here in my "lab" that is an actual switching regulator. [recom-power.com] And for some reason I had mentally bucketed it with LDOs, which as you noted, are just low-dropout varieties of linear regulators. And yes, switching regulators like these are a little pricier, although I believe with the RECOM R-78xx series you're just paying for the convenience of swapping out a 7805 space heater without touching the rest of your circuit.:-P

I feel bad, I should've sourced where I got the saying from. To quote wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_proof) which more eloquently describes the origin of the saying I used to post in my cubicle which is a quote of Douglas Adams from Mostly Harmless.

Along those lines, Douglas Adams wrote in Mostly Harmless, "a common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."

You know, through my life I think I get roughly 3-5 new connector types for every one that finally dies?

I'm up to 5 USB connectors, but I don't have a parallel port in the house anymore. Still have as serial port. My computers still have the dedicated PS2 style mouse/keyboard ports, but at least I don't have the big one anymore. On the other hand on the video side I have VGA, HDMI, DVI, D-Port, S-Video, coax, RCA, component, etc... Maybe I'll get rid of the S-Video soon.

Seriously, why can't we have cables that fit into each other as well as be symmetrical. Oh wait, that's thanks to the patent system [google.com]. At least this is progress and maybe we will have one standard for most types of application (not holding my breath).

Seriously, why can't we have cables that fit into each other as well as be symmetrical.

The one you've linked to isn't symmetrical. My brain's aching a bit just trying to work out if it's even possible with multiple pins and the requirement for good electrical contact. Plus you don't want to increase the complexity of the controllers if you can help.

If it is possible it might have to be circular, which would be wasteful of space. It might also require an increase in controller complexity. I don't know, it's late.

Seriously, why can't we have cables that fit into each other as well as be symmetrical. Oh wait, that's thanks to the patent system [google.com]. At least this is progress and maybe we will have one standard for most types of application (not holding my breath).

One person replying to you already pointed out that this patent expired in 2006.

Even more importantly, this was a design patent. It only covers the ornamental design for a device or article of manufacture. If you're reading it to cover something fu

"The first iteration will have a 5 volt power transfer rate, but it is expected to deliver up to 100 watts for higher power applications in the future."

That's a magnificent sentence there!

I have no idea what a 5 volt power transfer rate is. 5 volts is an electric potential. Power isn't transferred either, power is an instantaneous quantity, whose effect is work (or energy if you prefer). In a DC circuit, power is defined by the product of potential and current, meaning "5V" is meaningless as a description of power, just as "10N" is useless to define a torque.

Add to that the fact that 100W at 5V implies 20A implies that the 100W will not be available at 5V. 20A require enormous (by computing standards) cables.

It will most likely be similar to POE.After negotiation (at 5v), a higher voltage up to 48v is supplied, or at least a voltage that allows the device to remain within SELV (Safety Extra Low Voltage) standards. At 48v, you are looking at around 2Amps, which is what existing USB cables can do.

One other point. Although micro USB is rated for lots of insertions, the overmould is too big and allows too much leverage on the socket which is breakeing sockets (way worse than breaing the cables plug).Apple got this

Not to mention.... Where is this 100W going to come from? Do you think that the PC makers build PCs with power supplies in them with that much extra capacity just in case someone plus in a USB hair dryer? Well, they don't.

That gives a lowball 15 watts figure at 5 volts, which is pretty nice given I have a few 2.5 watt USB chargers around (and a mains-to-USB adapter that gives only 2.5 watts as well)The worst case is a useful metric, it seems to define applications other than your specialty mobile computing device : e-cigs and other little things. The standard would be a nice 6x increase, if USB C is on both ends (and some minimal electronics handle it in the device)

This is true unless the receptacle was mounted upside-down. This means the top of the receptacle points toward the bottom of the device. I've owned a couple Dell Dimension PCs whose front USB ports were upside-down, and my Archos 43 Internet Tablet's USB port is upside-down. And you're right that sideways plugs can be a pain, such as the B receptacle on a Seagate hard drive enclosure or both USB receptacles (A host for controllers, micro-B device for debugging) on an OUYA console.

So when you plug in a cable, the logo on the top is always correct. When it is a sideways plug, you are on your own.:)

I have a few cables which violate this spec (despite the USB spec being quite clear on this point). I'm not sure if it's a manufacturing error (cable assemblies sent to the molding process upside-down) or the manufacturer just being egotistical ("We want our logo to be visible to the user"). Western Digital, I'm looking at you...

I really ought to toss them (along with my collection of USB 1.1 cables and hubs).

thin little thing inside to break. Complete fail. they just need to do a copy of the fraking lightning connector but made some technology advances to it. Apple does not have a patent on exposed pin connectors.

Apple got the lightning connector right, just give us a USB3.0 version of the fracking thing and put the craptastic mini/micro/and nano usb plugs to death already.

"The PD communication channel is an RF system:- 23.2 MHz DFSK with a nominal deviation of 500kHz"

So the VBUS/GND pair alone can be enough to transmit data than USB LS (1 Mbps) and USB FS (12 Mbps). I see this a a very interesting solution: a standard to deliver negotiated power and mid range data rate using only 2 wires. If only the USB PD will allow a broadcast topology, I see a lot of possible applications...

Micro B can die. That connector design sucks that bad. However, I really hope that USB A still sticks around and the new laptops/desktops continue to come with those ports. I've got tons of keyboards, mice, joysticks lying around and I don't want to have to stock tons of A to C adapters to continue to use them with new computers. USB A is also pretty sturdy and can take tons of abuse.

The USB A connector is also highly ubiquitous. Now we are going to have 2 physically incompatible USB ports present on c

The upside is you know you have Power Delivery, USB 3.1 and whatever just by looking at the connector. With a random USB type A, I know fuck all about how many amps it support or not even if it is USB 1 or USB 2. It is a benefit to have both USB C on host and device as well.

Perhaps the question is whether both ends of the cable is the same.The 3.1 micro B shown in the figure has different ends, the C version is the same at both ends (and of course the plug on each end is reversible).

I used to worry about high currents thrown around electronics these days. I don't anymore. Check it out:

- 100 amp mosfets in TO-220 packages with the thin tab. First time I saw this I thought it's going to catch fire. Lots of cheapo UPSes work like this now, and they *do* pass hundred of amps through the flimsiest of materials. So it gets hot, so? It'll last one day past the warranty and that's all it needs to do.

- 180 amp brushless controllers. Motors the size of a Coke can rated for 6KW. Yes 6 kilowatts. Granted, they're water cooled, but I would have thought this is the equivalent of a tankless water heater and the boat could have just worked off the steam generated!

Obviously, previous design rules WRT to current were too conservative. Look at your dryer plug, and look at a RC boat's (or any battery powered toy) connectors. But I predict fires in any case as manufacturers start counting strands in the wires...